Indian cos bracing to dominate Sri Lanka energy sector: Opposition

"Indians aim to dominate the importation, storage and retail distribution of oil in the country. This was the result of their continued efforts to enter Sri Lanka's energy sector and grab hold of it," Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the senior JVP legislator, told reporters yesterday.
He said massive financial problems faced by state fuel entity Ceylon Petroleum Corporation had opened the doors for the Indians to completely dominate the local energy sector.

Figures have shown that CPC had incurred a loss of 94 billion rupee last year while the state power entity, Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) had suffered a 25 billion rupee loss.
"One third of our retail petroleum sales was allocated to the Indian Oil Corportation while another one third was to be given to Bharat Petroleum.

The Indians have also entered the power generation through the Sampur coal power plant", Dissanayake stressed.

Dissanayake said the non-realisation of an anticipated credit line from Iran to refurbish the island's sole refinery at Sapugsakanda was also to be at India's advantage.

Dissanayake stressed that these development would mean that government of Sri Lanka would lose control of determining the retail prices in the energy sector.
"This would be bad for the country"